i would be more concerned about the data on the phone than about loosing the device itself (which also is great pain). Think of getting your laptop stolen. Being able to delete this data before someone else figures out where e.g. the passwords are stored - most likely in clear text - is worth quite a lot, at least to me.

The reverse ssh method sounds easy, as long as one has access to machine with an running ssh server.
Btw. in the case of running ssh + dyndns on the device I'd recommend to disable password based logins and the use of a public key instead.